Out of the Woods

Prelude to “Hänsel und Gretel” Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921)

Masquerade Suite Aram Khachaturian (1903-78)WaltzNocturneMazurkaRomanceGalop

Intermission

Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36 Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)Adagio molto – Allegro con brioLarghettoScherzo: AllegroAllegro molto

Please join us after the concert for a reception in the rotunda

Kindly silence all mobile devices and refrain from flash photography

7:30 p.m. Dec. 10, 2017Moeser Auditorium

Hill Hall, UNC-Chapel Hill

Guest ConductorEvan Feldman

In Western literature from Beowulf onward, forest imagery is potent and pervasive. The home to fearful creatures, real or mythical, the deep woods embody literal danger yet also symbolize “the perilous aspects of the unconscious, that is, the tendency to devour or obscure the reason.” (Juan Eduardo Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols) “But where the danger is,” wrote the poet Friedrich Hölderlin, “also grows the saving power.” This evening the Chapel Hill Philharmonia invites you on three musical journeys into the symbolic darkness of the forest primeval and, at least twice, back into the light.

Humperdinck: Prelude to Hänsel und Gretel“Ding-Dong! The witch is dead!” From the fairytales collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm to The Wizard of Oz, the demise of the wicked witch, whether caused by fire, water, or a falling house, fills us with munchkin-like glee. “Hansel and Gretel,” with its archetypal evil crone, appears in the Grimms’s Children’s and Household Tales. In the original telling (1812), an impoverished husband and wife abandon their children in a witch-infested forest to forestall their own starvation. In subsequent versions the tale lost its filicidal edge and acquired a religious patina. In 1890-93 the German composer Engelbert Humperdinck and his librettist sister Adelheid Wette adopted it for a Märchenoper (fairytale opera).We know the story. A brother and sister, left alone and hungry in their wretched house “hard by a great forest,” neglect their chores and dance the day away. Mother comes home and, vexed by the children’s frivolity, accidentally spills a jug of milk, their only food. She shoos Hansel and Gretel into the woods to gather wild strawberries. Her anger grows when her broom-maker husband comes home tipsy, until he explains that he has sold all his wares and purchased a sack of food. Father suddenly notices the children’s absence. Where are they? In the Ilsenstein Forest? But the cannibalistic “Nibble Witch” (Knusperhexe) lives there! She captures children and bakes them into gingerbread!Meanwhile, deep in the forest Hansel and Gretel gorge on the fruit they have picked. Becoming lost, they must spend the night in the woods. They sing a prayer that 14 angels will watch over their sleep, then share a dream in which the angels descend from heaven on a golden ladder. In the morning the children come across a cottage made of chocolate cream with sugared windows, surrounded by gingerbread fencing. They can’t resist a taste. A voice floats out from the cottage: “Nibble, nibble, mousekin, who’s nibbling at my housekin?” The Witch appears and captures the children. She tells Gretel to check the oven, but the clever girl tricks the ogress into inspecting the baking gingerbread herself. Hansel and Gretel shove the Witch into the oven, which explodes, breaking her spells. The gingerbread figures in the yard turn back into the children they once were. Hansel and Gretel’s parents make a timely appearance and all sing that when grief becomes unbearable Heaven will send relief—that is, bring us safely out of the woods.The Hansel and Gretel project began humbly when Adelheid asked her brother to compose four folk-like choral settings for verses she had written for her children to perform at a family party. By December 1890 it had grown to a singspiel with 16 songs. Humperdinck presented the score to his fiancée as an engagement present. Finally, the full three-act opera premiered on December 23, 1893, conducted by Richard Strauss who declared the work a masterpiece.Previously, Humperdinck had been known mainly as a teacher and critic. After conservatory training he won a traveling award to Italy where he chanced to meet Richard Wagner, the dominant figure in 19th century German opera. Humperdinck became one of his trusted assistants and in 1882 helped to produce Wagner’s final work, the grail quest story Parsifal.Hansel and Gretel proved a once-in-a-lifetime success that guaranteed Humperdinck financial security and long-lasting recognition. His name was even adopted by an English balladeer in the 1960s. Humperdinck returned to the Märchenoper

So into the woods you go again,You have to every now and then.Into the woods, no telling when,

Be ready for the journey.– Stephen Sondheim, Into the Woods

You’re out of the woodsYou’re out of the darkYou’re out of the night

Step into the sun / Step into the light– E.Y. Harburg, “Optimistic Voices” from The Wizard of Oz

Out of the Woods

idiom with Sleeping Beauty (1902) and The King’s Children (1910). The latter was a hit in its first production at New York’s Metropolitan Opera but failed to enter the permanent repertoire.Humperdinck could not easily escape Wagner’s shadow. Yet he created his own adroit blend of sophisticated harmonization with folk-like pastiche, apparent in the Prelude (overture) to Hansel and Gretel. Like Parsifal the Prelude opens with a prayer, the children’s bedtime song presented as a magnificent French horn chorale. However, observes John Ferris in a program for the Thames Youth Orchestra, “the contrast between...the simple piety of the evening hymn with which the overture begins and the tortured Christian ceremonial of Parsifal could not be stronger; and if there is exuberance and a lightness of touch in Wagner’s output...it is nothing to the rambunctious anarchic mischief which permeates Hansel and Gretel.” The impish spirit flashes out in the dances and Witch’s themes with which the Prelude continues. Humperdinck “concludes with an impressive polyphonic interweaving of all of this material—whatever else Wagner had

taught him, he had clearly learnt valuable lessons from [Wagner’s only comic mature opera] Die Meistersinger.” (Ferris)

Khachaturian: Masquerade SuiteThe dark side of the human psyche may lurk deep in the symbolic forest, but it also may hide behind masks in a glittering ballroom. The Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov (1814-41) employed this metaphor in his verse drama Masquerade, written in 1835 at the age of 21. In 1941 Aram Khachaturian composed incidental music for a revival of the play to commemorate the centenary of the poet’s death. He adapted the score for orchestra as the Masquerade Suite (1944). Khachaturian’s roots trace to Armenia in the Caucasus, the mountainous region between the Black and Caspian Seas. His father, a poor bookbinder, moved to Tbilisi, Georgia, where Aram was born in 1903. Following the Sovietization of the Caucasian states, Aram went to Moscow University to study biology. However, while he lacked formal training, his passion was music. At age 20 he gained entry to music school as a beginner cellist, but found a calling in composition. He advanced to the Moscow Conservatory and by graduation in 1934 had become a leading Soviet composer. Among his well-known works are concertos for piano and violin and the ballets Gayane and Spartacus. Influenced by his elder brother Suren, an actor and theater director, he also composed music for almost three dozen plays and films.While never parochial, Khachaturian remained attached to the Caucasus. He wrote, “I grew up in an atmosphere rich in folk music: popular festivities, rites, joyous and sad events in the life of the people always accompanied by music, the vivid tunes of Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian songs and dances performed by folk bards and musicians...[These] became deeply engraved in my memory...[and] determined my musical thinking.”In contrast to Khachaturian, Lermontov came from a privileged background. He was born in Moscow, educated at a prep school for children of the nobility, and matriculated at Moscow University. Yet he also loved the Caucasus where he spent much of a sickly childhood receiving treatments at mountain spas. Like many liberal students in Moscow, Lermontov opposed serfdom and the despotism of Tsar Nicholas I. A clash with a reactionary professor forced him to transfer to a military academy in St. Petersburg. As a junior officer in Russia’s capital, he became contemptuous of the upper crust’s Beau Monde (fashionable world) social life and rigid code of honor. Lermontov’s critique of the aristocracy permeates Masquerade and led the Tsar’s censors to ban the play until long after the poet’s death at age 26 in a duel, possibly provoked by a government agent. The five movements of Khachaturian’s Masquerade Suite capture the play’s emotionally charged story, a retelling of William Shakespeare’s Othello in a Russian accent: Waltz — Masquerade’s protagonist, Yevgeny Arbenin, is a brilliant, wealthy, arrogant man in early middle-age. Once a rake, he has settled into cynical self-absorption and married Nina (the Desdemona figure), a beautiful, sensitive

Hansel and GretelArthur Rackham

woman. In the opening scene Arbenin’s acquaintance Prince Zvezdich loses vast sums in a gambling den. Arbenin takes over the cards, wins some large bets, and bails out the Prince. The men unwind at a Masked Ball. Seeking an affair, Zvezdich flirts with a female mask (Baroness Strahl). He begs a token from her. She spies a bracelet on the floor, scoops it up, hands it to the Prince, and runs off. Zvezdich vows to bed the mystery woman. He tells the story to Arbenin and shows him the bracelet. Arbenin notices that it resembles a matched pair belonging to his own wife. He begins to suspect her of infidelity. Nina, too, attends the ball and finds herself strongly moved by the music, which foreshadows the coming tragedy: “How beautiful the new waltz is! ...Something between sorrow and joy gripped my heart.” Nocturne (night music) — Arbenin observes that Nina is missing one of her bracelets and doubts her claim that she merely lost it. Zvezdich meets Nina and sees that her remaining bracelet is the mate to his “keepsake.” Jumping to the wrong conclusion, he declares love and sends Nina a compromising letter, which Arbenin intercepts. Moreover, guarding her own reputation, the Baroness helps spread rumors that Nina is cuckolding her husband. Alone at night, Arbenin broods on the “affair” between his wife and Zvezdich and plots revenge. A solo violin portrays his dark thoughts. Mazurka — The Baroness tries to clear Nina’s name, but Arbenin refuses to listen. To dishonor Zvezditch, Arbenin falsely accuses him of cheating at cards. Because the Prince fails to challenge Arbenin to a duel, the other aristocrats shun him. Attending a final Grand Ball before leaving to seek redemption on the battlefield, Zvezditch returns the bracelet to Nina and warns that her husband is terribly angry. Arbenin observes this meeting, assumes it is a lovers’ tryst, and grows more enraged. Nina becomes overheated dancing a lively Mazurka at the ball. She retires to a salon where friends prevail on her to sing a sentimental Romance (next movement). Arbenin enters and Nina asks him for a dish of ice cream. Arbenin brings the cooling treat, but mixes in poison. Whirling dance music in ¾ time represents the Grand Ball, and dramatic back and forth shifts in tempo and dynamics convey the comedy of errors, turning to tragedy, caused by Arbenin’s misplaced suspicions.

Romance — This is Nina’s song. She returns home from the ball feeling ill. Arbenin tells Nina she is poisoned and refuses her poignant entreaties for help. Nina curses her husband as a murderer, swears innocence before God, and dies. The music conveys love and loss. It ends with hushed woodwinds as strings pluck Nina’s final heartbeats. Galop — The Galop, a wildly energetic circle dance in two-beat rhythm named after the galloping of horses, became especially popular as the final dance of a ball. Khachaturian’s music, apt for a whacky “Looney Tunes” cartoon but interspersed with moments of clarity and a beautiful clarinet cadenza, illuminates the play’s final Act.

Arbenin receives compelling proof of Nina’s innocence. A vengeful “Stranger” he had once fleeced at cards gives him an eyewitness account of how Zvevditch obtained the bracelet. Then the Prince shows Arbenin a letter from the Baroness confessing that she betrayed Nina. As he comprehends the magnitude of his folly, Arbenin goes insane before our eyes. He descends through idiotic babbling into catatonic silence. The Stranger gloats, “This proud mind has broken today!” The manic music conveys bitter irony. As Shakespeare wrote in Othello, jealousy is a “green-eyed monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on.” In Lermontov’s own bleak words from the poem “Lonely and Sad” (1840):

What good are the passions? For sooner or later their sweet sickness ends when reason speaks up;And life, if surveyed with cold-blooded regard, is stupid and empty — a joke.

Beethoven: Symphony No. 2In the spring of 1802 at age 31 after a decade in Vienna, Ludwig van Beethoven’s life seemed full. He had achieved superstardom as a pianist best known for breathtaking improvisations. He also was gaining high regard as the composer of works such as the Moonlight Sonata, even if some critics could not grasp his excursions beyond the boundaries set by the late wunderkind Wolfgang Amadé Mozart and the living old master Joseph Haydn.

Arbenin and Nina1941 film of Masquerade

Growing prosperity enabled Beethoven to escape the capital and rent rooms for six months in “quiet and beautiful Heiligenstadt, one of the villages amid the trees and vineyards of the Vienna woods, a few miles from the city…his outside windows looking to hills and fields and the Danube, in the distance the Carpathian Mountains.” (Jan Swafford, Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph) Here no witches lurked. Beethoven took daily walks and began to sketch what became the Sixth Symphony (Pastoral), finished six years later, with its depictions of birdsong, burbling brooks, and shepherds singing gratefully after the passing of a thunderstorm. “No man can love the country as I love it,” Beethoven wrote. “Woods, trees and rocks send back the echo that man desires.”

The sojourn at Heiligenstadt proved intensely productive. Beethoven composed three inventive sonatas for piano and three more for violin and piano. He finished his Second Symphony and laid the groundwork for several more symphonies, the Third Piano Concerto, and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives. Yet in this bucolic setting Beethoven also coped with an exquisitely painful, dark secret. For the past six years he had been growing progressively deaf.Indeed, the retreat to the country had come at the advice of a new doctor Beethoven consulted about his debilitating intestinal problems and, most importantly, his hearing loss. Medical scholars have debated for decades whether these maladies shared a common cause. A modern analytical study of Beethoven’s hair and bone indicates he suffered from chronic lead poisoning. Based on this finding, his symptoms, and the accounts of his physicians and friends, the authors of a recent paper conclude that “Ludwig van Beethoven’s medical history may therefore be summarized as being caused by one entity: his consumption of wine tainted with lead.” [Stevens (2013) Laryngoscope 123:2854-8] They suggest that Beethoven began to drink when he was 17 to ease psychological pain after the death of his mother, and that around age 30 his wine consumption increased “to stimulate his appetite and ease his intestinal pain.” Because he preferred cheap Hungarian wine that frequently was adulterated with lead to fortify its flavor, Beethoven fell victim to a feed forward loop in which the very agent that temporarily relieved his unhappiness and discomfort also destroyed his hearing.As he approached the end of the working holiday in Heiligenstadt, Beethoven recognized that his sojourn in the woods had not slowed the encroachment of deafness. Often susceptible to depression, he contemplated suicide:

“…what a humiliation for me when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard a shepherd singing and again I heard nothing. Such incidents drove me almost to despair; a little more of that and I would have ended my life.”

This account of his travail comes from “the Heiligenstadt Testament,” a will in the form of a letter to his brothers Carl and Johann that Beethoven penned in October 1802 but never delivered. He kept the document in his private papers where it was discovered after his death 25 years later, together with an unsent letter from 1812 to an unidentified “Immortal Beloved.” Beethoven begins the Testament by apologizing for “malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic” behavior. He blames these failings and his withdrawal from “the diversions of society” on the bitter “prospect of a lasting malady” and the compelling professional need to keep it secret: “Ah, how could I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than in others, a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection?” As a result, he mourns, “I must live almost alone like an exile.”Incredibly, the Second Symphony, completed near the end of Beethoven’s stay in Heiligenstadt, shows no sign of his internal life and death struggle. Rather, it stands out for “the lyricism, the wit, the easy and playful energy” that make this the happiest of the composer’s nine symphonies. (Michael Steinberg, The Symphony: A Listener’s Guide) At the same time the work achieves a great leap forward in originality and scale from the First Symphony, and marks a steppingstone towards Beethoven’s epic breakthrough work, composed the next year, the Third Symphony (Eroica).

Beethoven walking in naturePainting by Julius Schmid

The Second Symphony opens with a slow, spacious introduction. Steinberg likens it to the beginning of Mozart’s Prague Symphony (No. 38, also in D major). He finds both noteworthy for “festive grandeur…and the amazing richness and range of material.” “I do not know,” he writes, “a better pair of examples from which to see how one great composer learns from another.” Swafford focuses on Beethoven’s growth beyond the model—“Call it Mozart intensified: more brash, rollicking, and youthfully raw.” Beethoven’s introduction peaks with a dramatic unison D-minor chord and “spills into a quick movement [marked Allegro con Brio] of extraordinary verve.” The movement continues with a startling, yet logical, excursion through multiple key changes, punctuated by dynamic contrasts, “in a mixture of innocence and unpredictability,” culminating with “the final affirmation of D major.” (Steinberg)The second movement, in triple meter, is marked “Larghetto.” Whereas Largo denotes a very slow tempo and dignified style, what does Beethoven imply by using the diminutive form? How much faster should the music be played, and with what character? Steinberg calls it “leisurely,” and avers that the movement “brings a sweetness that is new in Beethoven’s language.” While it has no discernible program, the Larghetto clearly shares a pastoral feeling with the “Scene by the brook” of the Sixth Symphony. It also calls to mind the famous aria “Ombra mai fu” from George Frideric Handel’s opera Serse (1738), a tongue-in-cheek tribute paid by the emperor Xerxes to the shade of a plane tree, which bears the same Larghetto tempo marking (although it is often mislabeled “Handel’s Largo”) and key (A major).The Scherzo may be the first symphonic movement ever to use that designation, in preference to the conventional Minuet. Beethoven “made it driving and pouncing, with nimble banter between the orchestral choirs. Its trio alternates a phrase of warmly eighteenth-century elegance with faux-furioso interruptions.” (Swafford)The boisterous Finale shocked conservative listeners, including one critic who likened it to “a hideously writhing, wounded dragon that refuses to die and, though bleeding...furiously thrashes about with its stiffened tail.” The movement opens with “a gesture of captivating impudence, a two-note flick up high, followed by a dismissive growl down below.” (Steinberg) Swafford hears it as “an absurd giant hiccup that dissolves into skittering comedy.” Beethoven repeats the joke over and over. Then he winds down to a whimsical little theme, setting the expectation that the symphony will end, like many of Haydn’s, with a swift return to brightness and a concluding bang. But once the coda gets underway, writes Steinberg, “it grows like a genie let out of a bottle.” As it expands and morphs in character, there are even hints that, as in Shakespeare’s Othello or Lermontov’s Masquerade, a comedy of errors will turn tragic. “But the spirit of fun wins the day, and the curtain comes down on a scene of laughter with troubles resolved and glasses raised.” (Swafford)If Beethoven entered a spiritual forest of despair in Heiligenstadt, the Second Symphony could symbolize his return back into the light. But comedy was neither this composer’s natural milieu nor the saving power he found in the darkness. His hearing indeed would be lost, together with his career as a performing pianist, and his hopes of social comfort and perhaps of love. As Swafford reminds us, “It is no surprise that [Beethoven’s] affliction brought him to the brink of suicide...If he was to live, he must understand that he would live in misery, and there must be a reason to endure that misery.”The reason was his art. In the pivotal sentence of the Heiligenstadt Testament, Beethoven explains his decision to survive: “Oh, it seemed impossible to me to leave this world before I had produced all that I felt capable of producing, and so I prolonged this wretched existence…” At the same age Abraham Lincoln pulled himself out of a suicidal depressive episode with the thought, as recounted by his closest friend, that as yet he “had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived.” Like Lincoln or the persona in Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” Beethoven felt the pull of a permanent peaceful rest, but chose to continue on his road.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

Mark Furth, PhD ©2017